Wednesday, July 6, 2011

pieces of sunshine

I've been so busy painting citrus fruit this week that I didn't have time to develop an idea for Illustration Friday (this week's theme=remedy). However, I noticed that my daughter, who promptly caught a cold upon arriving in relatively cool & dry Hokkaido from hot & humid Nagoya, has been chomping on some kind of Vitamin C-rich nutritional supplement. So let my etegami oranges count for the Vitamin C that my daughter is absolutely convinced is a "remedy for the common cold."

The writing that accompanies the sliced blood orange etegami above says "sawayaka," the Japanese word for refreshing or invigorating. It's a word that is often used to describe a cool breeze that revives you on a hot day, or how a slightly tart, refreshing drink tastes when you’re terribly thirsty.

The writing on the etegami collage below that one is a quote from one of my favorite songs of encouragement by singer/songwriter Takako Okamura. The song itself is titled “Don’t Give Up Your Dreams,” and the quote (which comes in the middle of the song) translates roughly to Shine As Only You Can Shine. The orange wedges were painted on a washi card, then cut out and glued to the cover of an antique book of Japanese singing poems (shigin) printed with gold birds in flight.

Do you know if there's a youtube recording of Takako Okamura's “Don’t Give Up Your Dreams? And if so, could you give us the link perhaps? Or write the song title in Japanese, please? I'd love to hear the song.

(All her youtube songs are titled in Japanese (which I can't read). Nothing on itunes. Amazon has her albums w english titles, but the song tracks aren't.)

A Beginner's Guide to Etegami

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.